


Jazz and Liquor

by Mizuni_no_neko



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1920s, 2024, Future setting...sorta, Ghosts, Halloween, Jazz era, M/M, Prohibition, Supernatural - Freeform, speakeasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 05:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizuni_no_neko/pseuds/Mizuni_no_neko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year on Halloween Night for a century, the same Speakeasy has replayed the tragic fire that killed over half the patrons, including a young boy named Alfred, who will forever be waiting on a date that never came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jazz and Liquor

**Author's Note:**

> Ok! So I just needed to pump out a few drabbles to get the creative juices flowing after a long absence from writing. I'm really hoping to finish another chapter of my story Dreamscape soon, but I've only got a few more weeks before I go back to school and I really want to buckle down this semester!

Jazz came through the gramophone, tinny and otherworldly as it drifted through the frigid air of the long-abandoned building. It was the winter of 2024, but the room looked like time had stopped a century before back when it had been a speakeasy. It was nothing now, a boarded up piece of history that hadn’t been seen by the eyes of the living in a long, long time. 

Midnight drew near and still the gramophone played, eerie and alien in the dim, cobweb-dusted space. The room grew colder, drafts coming from nowhere dropping the temperature well below freezing. It was Halloween Eve and the dead were coming out to play. 

Half-visible forms appeared out of the air, smoke made flesh, or as near to it as it gets. Men and women seemed to step out of the walls, coming down stairs that had been demolished and through doors that had been demolished. The whole room lit up with blue lights, will-o-wisps forming in the sconces that used to hold the light for the establishment.

The shadows of mouth moved in the faces of the smoky people, but the only sound was the tinny wail of the gramophone, spitting jazz into the ghostly shindig. An ethereal bartender poured drinks, but there was neither clink of glass nor the sound of liquid being poured. 

A young man glided over to the bar, hovering above the cracked red leather barstool. He mouthed something to the barkeep and the shadow of his mouth indented in a smile. It was the same every Hallows Eve. The patrons of the bar would gather here and go through the same routine they had every Halloween Night since the fire on Halloween of 1924. 

This spirit had once been a boy named Alfred, long-limbed and slightly awkward in his growing body, Alfred still had no trouble finding a gal or two to go with him to have a few illicit drinks. He’d been alone that night, though, waiting at the bar for a date that never showed up.

He’d been seeing this guy on the down low, Ivan. A Russkie immigrant he’d met in the bathroom at a jazz show. All those dancers, male and female, half naked and shaking their bits around stage had worked both of them up and one thing had led to another…

He’d gotten to the bar early to wait for him. It was going to be their first time going out on a real date and Alfred was nervous and giddy with anticipation. He’d already had several whiskeys by the time the date was supposed to start, and Ivan still hadn’t showed up. He didn’t slow down, consuming drinks faster as he got more and more worried. 

He hadn’t stood a chance when the still in the back had exploded, sending fireballs shooting out into the patronage, everything engulfed in an inferno. His last thoughts had been of Ivan, and how he was so glad, just this once, that he’d been stood up.

But Ivan hadn’t stood him up. Just as the time neared and the ghostly patrons of the bar began to act out their deaths for the 100th time, another figure floated in, covering his shadowed mouth with his arm and dove into the flames, looking frantically around. He fought against the crowd trying to get out, desperately making his way to the bar where he had seen Alfred mere seconds ago. But the crowd trampled him underfoot, knocking him unconscious two feet away from the body of the man he’d tried to save. 

Neither one of them had a chance to see the other before the ceiling came crashing down on them.


End file.
